You want to hire someone in a country where you have no company and no payroll registration. We employ them through our entity, run their local payroll and handle the statutory obligations. You direct the work.
An EOR splits the legal employment from the working relationship. The contract, the payroll registration, the social security and the statutory obligations of that country sit with our entity. The objectives and the day-to-day sit with you. To the worker it feels like being employed by you, because in every way that affects them it is.
What the arrangement includes:
Holds the employment contract, runs the local payroll, pays tax and social security, meets the statutory employment obligations and keeps the records.
Choose the person, set the salary, direct the work, manage performance and decide when the engagement starts and ends.
Has a real local employment contract with the entitlements of their own country, and works for your business day to day.
We will tell you where a role risks creating a taxable presence for your own company, which is the one thing an EOR cannot fully prevent.
A single engineer in Poland or a salesperson in Spain. Opening a subsidiary for one person makes no sense; leaving them on an invoice makes less.
Putting two or three people into a country to see whether it works, without committing to an entity, a registered office and a set of statutory accounts.
A good employee relocates abroad for family reasons. EOR keeps them employed and compliant instead of losing them or quietly breaking the rules.
A team in-country for the length of a contract, where a permanent entity would have to be wound up again as soon as the work finished.
A company that becomes the legal employer of a worker through its own registered entity in the country where that person works. The EOR holds the employment contract, runs the local payroll, pays income tax and social security to the right authority and meets the statutory employment obligations of that jurisdiction. You keep the commercial relationship and direct the work.
Because in most European countries the authorities decide what the relationship is, not the contract. Where somebody works set hours, under direction, for one client, on that client's systems, they look like an employee whatever the paperwork says. Reclassification brings back-dated social security, employer contributions, penalties and often employment rights the person never knew they had. It is the single most common and most expensive shortcut in international hiring.
Usually days rather than months once we have the worker's details and the commercial terms, because the entity, the registrations and the payroll already exist. Setting up your own subsidiary to do the same thing is a matter of months and a permanent commitment. That gap is most of the reason EOR exists.
It reduces the risk considerably but it does not switch it off. Permanent establishment depends on what the worker actually does, not on who employs them. Somebody habitually concluding contracts in your name can create a presence regardless of the EOR arrangement. Where a role looks like it might, we say so at the outset rather than after a tax authority raises it.
A genuine local employment contract with the statutory entitlements of their country: the right notice periods, paid leave to the local minimum, sick pay, parental leave, public holidays and social security. For senior candidates this is usually the difference between accepting and declining, because being asked to invoice as a contractor reads as an employer who has not thought it through.
Yes, and plenty of clients do once the headcount in a country justifies it. We plan the transfer so the workers keep continuity of employment and their accrued entitlements, and so the payroll moves cleanly across rather than being stopped and restarted. EOR is often the right way to start in a country, not the permanent answer.
Tell us the country, the role and the salary. We will come back with what it costs fully loaded, how quickly they can start, and whether the role raises any presence risk worth knowing about.